and starts, by some of his acts and not by others. When God comes forth
from the unvisioned light, which is thick darkness, of His own eternal,
self-adequate Being, and flashes into energy in Creation, Providence, or
Grace, the Law of His Working and His Purpose are one, in all regions.
The unity of the divine acts depends on this--that all flow from one
deep source, and all move to one mighty end. Standing on the height to
which His own declarations of His own nature lift our feebleness, we can
see how the 'river of God that waters the garden' and 'parts' into many
'heads,' gushes from one fountain. One of the psalms puts what people
call the 'philosophy' of creation and of providence very clearly, in
accordance with this thought--that the love of God is the source, and
the blessedness of man the end, of all His work: 'To Him that made great
lights; for His mercy endureth for ever. To Him that slew mighty kings;
for His mercy endureth for ever.'

Creation, then, is the effluence of the loving heart of God. Though the
sacred characters be but partially legible to us now, what He wrote, on
stars and flowers, on the infinitely great and the infinitely small, on
the infinitely near and the infinitely far off, with His creating hand,
was the one inscription--God is love. And as in nature, so in
providence. The origination, and the support, and the direction of all
things, are the works and the heralds of the same love. It is printed in
starry letters on the sky. It is graven on the rocks, and breathed by
the flowers. It is spoken as a dark saying even by sorrow and pain. The
mysteries of destructive and crushing providences have come from the
same source. And he who can see with the Psalmist the ever-during mercy
of the Lord, as the reason of creation and of judgments, has in his
hands the golden key which opens all the locks in the palace chambers of
the great King. He only hath penetrated to the secret of things
material, and stands in the light at the centre, who understands that